Mr. LINK. Yes, sir; I will do that.

Senator MCCLELLAN. Will you? Have you made such contacts already and asked them if you will be permitted to-if they would consent for you to disclose it?

Mr. LINK. At Mr. Bellino's request a number of them, yes, sir.
Senator MCCLELLAN. Have they consented?

Mr. LINK. This one came through, but that is the sole one, and the others, I do not know, they are still worried. I will see what I can do, though. I mean, we want

Senator MCCLELLAN. That is fine, that is all I want, for you to cooperate with us every way you can.

Mr. LINK. I have tried to. I think. I mean

Senator MCCLELLAN. You have not divulged that, of course, but that is what I want. If you will undertake to get them to release you so that you can come before this committee that is charged here with a very serious responsibility, as I see it

Mr. LINK. My sources, they seem to take the attitude that the Senate committee has got power enough to summon witnesses, bank

accounts

Senator MCCLELLAN. We have got all of that, but we cannot summon people

Mr. LINK. Income tax.

Senator MCCLELLAN (continuing). That we do not know. Some of this information that they have, some records they may have seen, may have been destroyed-there is no way for us to find out unless they are willing to come here, unless they can be identified to us so that we can subpena them and bring them here. Here is a man in high position that has either been slandered or who has deliberately perjured himself before this committee. And it involves public matters that the public has an interest in, and we have a responsibility in, and all I am trying to do is to get this record complete, thorough, and truthful.

Mr. LINK. Yes, sir.

Senator MCCLELLAN. So that we can make a decision that is just on the record.

Will you try to do that as early as possible?

Mr. LINK. Yes, sir; I will. I certainly will.

Senator MCCLELLAN. And will you keep in contact with the committee

Mr. LINK. Mr. Flanagan?

Senator MCCLELLAN. Counsel and keep us advised?

Mr. LINK. Yes.

Senator MCCLELLAN. And those that will release you, will you give him their names so that we can immediately have them subpenaed? Mr. LINK. I will, sir.

Senator MCCLELLAN. Thank you.

Senator HOEY. The Senator wants to ask a question.

Senator UNDERWOOD. I have one or two matters that I want to ask about, as to the stories that were written by you in the St. Louis PostDispatch of July 25, 1951. You say here that the monthly $500 payments to Boyle began soon after the first loan was approved in 1949. My understanding of his testimony is that he said they began soon before, some little time before the first loan was granted.

Mr. LINK. That is what I read in the papers. I did not hear the testimony.

Senator UNDERWOOD. Would his testimony make any difference— would you stand on the accuracy of this statement or would youMr. LINK. Yes, sir.

Senator UNDERWOOD. Retract it in view of his statement?

Mr. LINK. That is correct; it jibes with the record that they brought out here. What we say is it was granted after. I mean he was paid afterward.

Senator UNDERWOOD. He says it was paid before.

Mr. LINK. Well, the record speaks for itself on that, Senator. I think the loan first came through on March-early March, I believe. Senator UNDERWOOD. Early March. He went on the payroll February 17, did he not?

Mr. LINK. He continued through March, did he not? Into April and May?

Senator UNDERWOOD. You said they started after the loan was granted.

Mr. LINK. Well, I imagine that is due-we were having trouble getting the RFC records on the thing.

Senator UNDERWOOD. I just wanted to know whether you were certain about your

Mr. LINK. It was quite difficult to get the records on that.
Senator UNDERWOOD. There is another one here. You said:

As disclosed earlier by the Post-Dispatch, Boyle, Finnegan, and Young exerted pressure on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to obtain $565,000 in loansfor a St. Louis printing firm, American Lithofold Corp. Boyle was paid $8,000, his former law partner, Max Siskind, remains on the printing firm's payroll at $500 a month and Finnegan receives $1,000 a month from the company as a business counselor.

Now does that mean that Mr. Boyle was paid $8,000 in addition to anything that was paid to Mr. Siskind?

Mr. LINK. No; half of what Siskind got-half of the total of what Siskind got, $8,000-he got about $16,000 or $17,000.

Senator UNDERWOOD. That is all.

Senator HOEY. Senator Mundt?

Senator MUNDT. You mentioned the name of Raeburn Green, Mr. Link.

Mr. LINK. Yes, sir.

Senator MUNDT. Is he the attorney for the American Lithofold Co.-is he the St. Louis attorney for the American Lithofold Co.? Mr. LINK. He is; yes, sir.

Senator MUNDT. Is he also the attorney for the St. Louis PostDispatch?

Mr. LINK. His firm is; yes, sir; and he is, too.

Senator MUNDT. The same attorney in both cases?

Mr. LINK. Yes, sir.

Senator MUNDT. Has there been any conferences between the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and American Lithofold Co. that you know of on this case since they have the same attorney?

Mr. LINK. No, sir, none whatsoever. The only contact has been through me calling-say, I would call Mr. Blauner for something, then I'd get referred to Mr. Green, and, of course, I know him, and he

would, in turn, clear it with the Lithofold people, whether it should be released or not released.

Senator MUNDT. There is no tripartite conferences?

Mr. LINK. No.

Senator MUNDT. No relationships whatsoever. Do we have Mr. Flanagan?

Mr. FLANAGAN. Yes.

Senator MUNDT. Do we have Mr. Boyle's bank account?

Mr. FLANAGAN. No.

Senator MUNDT. So that we have the one bank account. If we could have the other we could check whether there was any―

Mr. FLANAGAN. We will get the other.

Senator NIXON. It was from Mr. Siskind's bank account that you learned that he had cash transactions totaling $24,000?

Mr. FLANAGAN. Yes, sir.

Senator NIXON. Over the 2-year period?

Senator MUNDT. How did we get that, by subpena?

Mr. FLANAGAN. Subpena from the bank.

Senator MUNDT. We subpenaed the bank for Mr. Boyle's bank account?

Mr. FLANAGAN. No, but we are going to.

Senator MUNDT. We are going to?

Mr. FLANAGAN. Yes.

Senator MUNDT. In this article, Mr. Link, you started in answer to a question that Senator McClellan asked you, not particularly relevant, but you started to discuss in more detail, I believe, what you meant by this paragraph. So I will read the paragraph and then let you elaborate on it to the extent that you have authoritative information. It was right after this May 4, 1950 or 1949 date, whichever it develops it was.

Next day a special meeting of the corporation directors was hastily called to "unscramble" the company's records on payments to Finnegan. Both Finnegan and the corporation had reported some payments to him in their income tax returns.

Can you give any further information!

Senator MCCLELLAN. May I ask, you say the next day-after what day?

Senator MUNDT. I said after May 4, 1950, or 1949, because we do not know which date it was.

Senator MCCLELLAN. All right.

Mr. LINK. We obtained that from Senator Williams' charges on the floor of the Senate, the data about the unscrambling-that was his investigation.

Senator MUNDT. Can you throw any additional light on the special meeting of the corporation directors-did you find any other information that you believed to be authoritative that you can give us on that? That is a new element in the picture, so far as I am concerned.

Mr. LINK. Just from the employees, and they are not very definite, that the books were altered and changed around, to change the record to conform with various things. And they left the $1,500 record, showing Finnegan getting $1,500, because they had already reported that $1,500 payment to Mr. Boyle.

Senator MUNDT. You have never been able, have you, Mr. Bellino

Mr. FLANAGAN. Mr. Bellino is out, but maybe I may be able to answer your question.

Senator MUNDT. Have we been able to find any evidence or records of previous bookkeeping accounts of any kind which might have antedated the unscrambling?

Mr. FLANAGAN. You are talking about the Boyle accounts now?
Senator MUNDT. I am talking about the American Lithofold.

Mr. FLANAGAN. The Boyle accounts on the American Lithofold books?

Senator MUNDT. The whole bookkeeping apparatus. After all, if they rigged the books, why, a lot of the information we have got here, of course, is not very pertinent or valuable.

Mr. FLANAGAN. I believe there is some indication, Senator, that they changed the minutes of a meeting with regard to Finnegan's handling of that loan with the Tower Grove National Bank which he described when he was here.

Senator MUNDT. He also referred to it in the later paragraph which would verify that part of the Post story. It says later minutes of the directors' meeting were "corrected," and the certificate for 120 shares of Lithofold stock with a par value of $12,000 which had been issued in the name of Finnegan's wife, was canceled, which certificate was issued for the same number of issue to persons within the company. I mean, if they were rigging the minutes and rigging the books, it would be certainly very valuable if we could find out what took place before the distortions were made.

Senator NIXON. In that connection, Mr. Chairman, if the Senator will yield, I have before me a memorandum which was prepared by the staff, I think by Mr. Bellino, which indicates that the staff investigation shows that the initial record of the telephone call from R. J. Blauner in Washington to Homer Stanhope at St. Louis relative to the issue of the first check to Boyle has disappeared. Is that correct? Mr. FLANAGAN. If that is what it says, it is true; yes, sir.

Senator NIXON. That is another indication, apparently, which might have been referred to in the record.

Senator MUNDT. Have we exhausted every resource available to us for trying to get behind these records, back beyond the date when they were changed or rigged?

Mr. FLANAGAN. We are still working on it.

Senator MUNDT. Still working on it?

Mr. FLANAGAN. Yes, sir.

Senator MUNDT. That is certainly very pertinent in this case.

One phase of this whole transaction that has disturbed me a great deal and caused me a lot to raise my eyebrows frequently. I have never read about it in any of your articles, Mr. Link, but the fact that when Mr. Boyle ceased getting checks directly, and after he had endorsed the last check which he endorsed, which was on April 30, 1949, that the next three or four checks were issued to a Sam Siscon, and it is very difficult for me to understand such a lackadaisical arrangement of retainer, that you do not know his first name and cannot spell his last name.

I wonder if you could shed any additional light on that curious, highly curious transaction.

Mr. LINK. About all I know is that Mr. Blauner told me during a talk I had with him one day, when we were looking over those checks, that Blauner or Controller Stanhope, or both-no, it was not Stanhope, he was not there-Mr. Blauner told me that the name had been obtained over the telephone from Washington, and the girl who took it down spelled it wrong in the first place and got confused on the first name. They did not know him, even. I mean, they just took the name, and two or three checks were issued, we have got copies of them.

Senator MUNDT. Did Blauner say that he was the author of that phone call from Washington?

Mr. LINK. I think he said that Mr. Green called up.
Senator MUNDT. Mr. Green called up?

Mr. LINK. Yes.

Senator MUNDT. The St. Louis office?

Mr. LINK. The St. Louis office or Mr. Green's secretary. I am not certain on that.

Senator MUNDT. That is about the general kind of confused explanation we have had on it. I wonder if we could find something more specific.

Mr. LINK. They did not know Mr. Siskind, they knew nothing about him, did not know how to spell his name, and they just took this name over the phone and spelled it wrong and gave it the wrong first name.

Senator MUNDT. Those are all of the questions, Mr. Chairman, but I would like to make a little summary, and you may not like it, so I want you to listen to it. I am not going to ask another question, but I am prepared to make a little summary. You may not like it. Senator HOEY. No. 1 or No. 2?

Senator MUNDT. This will be No. 1. It is not exactly a summary, but it is this.

I do not like to have witnesses who have appeared before this committee endeavor to put words in the mouth of the committee or to indicate that as a consequence of their appearance here they have either been indicted or acquitted or vindicated.

So when I read in the morning press Mr. William M. Boyle, apparently, speaking in the committee room after he left-after the hearings were concluded yesterday-is quoted as saying that the committee had vindicated him.

I want to say that, speaking from the standpoint of the senior Senator from South Dakota, there was nothing that transpired at these hearings yesterday which in any way vindicated Mr. Boyle.

I want to say also, speaking for myself, there has nothing occurred which indicted or convicted him, but I think it was highly improper for him to give a press release indicating the committee had vindicated him.

If any committee member did so express himself, he can be quoted as such, but, as far as I am concerned, there are many loose ends to this case on which we have had highly unsatisfactory explanations. The case is still open. Nobody has been vindicated.

I am just speaking for myself.

Senator HOEY. I may add, so far as I am concerned, no statements were made by me touching the matter in any way, either in vindication or in conviction of Mr. Boyle or anybody connected with it.